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Flagship head to head: Lumia 950 XL vs HP Elite X3

As I finish a couple of weeks with the HP Elite X3, and with fourreviewpartsnow complete, I tried switching back to the Lumia 950 XL for a few days. Which gave me the impetus to do a direct comparison at every level between the two smartphones. Yes, one's far more business-focussed than the other, so they're really not competitors except here on AAWP, where enthusiasts will be (hopefully) interested in my deliberations below.

Lumia 950 XL and HP Elite X3, each with Windows virtual controls swiped away, showing the full extent of their displays.

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As usual, I've shaded in green an obvious 'win' for either device, I honestly have no idea which way this one's going to go (as I start to compile the feature)... Any row where a winner would be totally subjective is left uncoloured. Or, where both devices are utterly excellent but in different ways, I've given both a 'green'(!)

[By the way, if you're viewing this feature on (ironically) a smaller-screened Windows Phone then the table may well cause you problems. Try viewing in landscape mode? Failing that, go view this on a laptop or tablet and then roll on Windows 10 Mobile across the board on all the older phones!]

IP67 for liquid and dust, plus mil-spec drop and shock resistance, thanks to the use of shock-absorbing plastics rather than metal.

No specific durability metrics, though the fact that the back comes off will help enormously for water damage, i.e. taking out battery and cards immediately, drying out the internals. Damage to the back or corners is trivial through replacement, but the screen's exposed, of course.

LTE up to 300Mbps (all bands), NFC, Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, integral wifi tethering, Bluetooth 4.2, same Continuum connectivity just as with the X3

Processor, performance

Snapdragon 820 chipset, 4GB RAM (of which 3.5GB are used directly), in theory very fast indeed - though it's still not clear how much the OS and firmware have been optimised for it yet - see the comment and link on the right.

Windows Photos syncs across all signed-in devices, subject to your OneDrive tariff, should you have thousands of images in the system. Plus Windows 10 backs all your media, application data and settings to a separate backup folder system, tariff-free on OneDrive.

Ditto, Windows 10 Photos works really well, helped by a decent chipset on these devices to plough through hundreds of thousands of thumbnails!

Biometrics

Iris recognition ('Windows Hello') works well unless you wear varifocals(!), but takes a few seconds in real world use, while the fingerprint sensor is effectively instant though in practice the 'Hello' animation takes a second, so....!

Reliant on just the iris scanner - it works but is hardly the quickest or most convenient way to authenticate.

Applications and ecosystem

Windows 10 Mobile now has just about every mainstream app covered, aside from Snapchat and Tinder. And anything to do with Google services! The idea with the Elite X3 though is to have professional application suites like Office, Outlook, Salesforce, and many more, plus the option of a paid/managed virtual Win32 desktop through Continuum and HP Workspace.

Exactly as for the Elite X3, the two are 100% equivalent at the Windows 10 Mobile software level. I doubt anyone's tried dialling into HP Workspace using a Lumia but of course it should work in theory. In practice, you'd probably use the Remote Desktop application as an individual or small business owner.

Upgrades and future

Windows 10 Mobile will be updated through 2017, of course, as part of the global Windows 10 ecosystem. Production devices can expect updates every month, Insiders every few weeks. The X3 is part of the Insider program if needed.

Ditto, the next major update is in Spring 2017 and is dubbed the 'Creators Update'. Not that it affects the phone too much, other than fixing bugs under the hood and improving general performance.

Verdict

Adding up the green 'wins' gives the HP Elite X3 the victory by 6-4, which also summarises how I feel about the two devices after significant use. At a pinch I'd take the HP Elite X3 if offered both phones for the same money, though I admit that I'd be torn, since the Lumia 950 XL's wins (mainly imaging) are big, while the X3 simply presents as a more powerful and more rugged powerhouse and with hopefully better support from a more committed (to hardware) company.

Again I have to emphasise that the Elite X3 comes into the smartphone market at one end, diametrically opposite the likes of the Apple iPhone and cheap and cheerful Android handsets, while the Lumia 950 XL tries to fit in with both consumer and business requirements. So the two super-phones here aren't really competitors, other than running the same OS and both majoring on their Continuum chops.

As AAWP readers and enthusiasts though, which way would you fall on the two device above? I've already heard from a number of readers who have bought the Elite X3 for their own personal (and presumably professional) use and who are, on the whole, pretty happy.

OK, so I'm cheating here a little - the HP Elite X3 doesn't have traditional Glance screen, i.e. it doesn't automatically come on unless you're connected to a Continuum display. However, the HP Display Tools screensaver here is easy to run manually whenever you like. And it's (naturally) brighter than the semi-permanent Glance screen arrangement on the Lumia, so it moves around the screen as needed, to prevent burn-in...